A male and female performer smile endlessly into the video camera (Ã la Effort of the Smile). On a ceiling mounted mechanism, the video projectors and speakers slowly rotate around the gallery so that the video image drifts around the room, circling the viewer like a hungry wolf. The spectator, stuck between these two ridiculously smiling characters is obliged to make some connection between the two (are they lovers of strangers?) and themselves (are they looking at me or each other?). The audio is a collage of sounds â€“ rain, breathing, running, a crowd at a social gatheringâ€¦ â€“ is meant simply to heighten the tension between the two images.

Recently Flux Space hosted an open forum for those to read their responses to the proposed question from a text Where Art Belongs. With the words still echoing in my mind from that hot July night, I just read another blog post demarcating the moment that you become an artist: when you finally have Blue Chip gallery representation.

I’m troubled by this because it gives artists the false sense of security in their plans, wishes, hopes, dreams, and wants.Â I find more and more that the ideas proposed by artists like Marcel Duchamp ring a truth that needs to be firmly planted in everyone’s minds.Â If you exist in a society and youÂ go to a school that is given credit by approved members and groups of said society; further you are successful in completing all requirements demanded before being granted completion, then you are what you say you are.Â Going even further if you simply state to yourself that you are whatever you want to become, then you are what you say you wish to be.Â Clearly there are different levels of skill, ability, and knowledge that demarcate you as either good, bad, or passe, however we are not talking about that.

Very simply, I just wanted to start a dialogue by saying we all seek a certain type of success, and that dream is rarely tasted in the way that you want it to happen.Â There is no substitute for hard work, patience, and failure.Â In this current Depression, every art form has been relegated to oblivion by the economic purists.Â Money is not, nor should it ever be, the motivating factor.Â Personal success and growth can never be accounted for in a financial chart.Â That being said, money is a part of our lives.

So let me ask you the reader, does it deflate your artistic ideas if you never achieve a high end gallery representation, or if you make art in your attic or basement?Â Where does art belong if not in our hearts and minds?Â I believe it exists wherever we want it to, and that is devoid of a gallery, swarms of passerby’s, and collectors with money.Â We want all of that, but I don’t think we need it.Â What we need is to live without the trappings of the normal life; rent/mortgages, utility bills, and car insurance.Â What if someone offered us a live/work space for cheap that echoed our former college life? Â Would you NEED anything else, or just want it?Â